'Woman,Speak with a Loud Voice!'

This paper seeks to contribute to the critique of mainstream development discourse by conveying the ideas and issues raised by rural South African women. Building upon feminist and post-colonial discourses, this paper shifts the epistemological location of knowing to the women affected by development programmes and policies. Based upon interviews and discussions with over 600 women in rural communities, we offer a brief characterization of the South African context of rural women's lives, followed by rural women's comments about development, their daily struggles, and empowerment. Rural women's comments reveal a conception of development that is tied to their localized problem-solving skills and opportunities. Their response to the absence of development opportunities within their communities is to forge a space where they can negotiate between institutional spheres of power in order to address their needs. We argue that traditional development approaches overlook the space, or interstice, rural African women occupy between the modern state and traditional authority. For persons interested in development issues, rural women's experiences direct our attention to the in-between spaces as potential sites of empowerment.     

Cleaning Up Water? Or Building Rural Community? Community Watershed Organizations in Pennsylvania*

Abstract Recent initiatives from state and federal government agencies have helped foster the formation of community‐based watershed organizations. Although there is a great deal of enthusiasm about the potential of these organizations to enhance water quality, relatively little attention has been paid to the impacts these organizations may have on the well‐being of rural communities more generally. Assessments of effectiveness have typically focused on specific activities and accomplishments, rather than a broader range of community‐based effects. In short, we ask whether community‐based environmental management improves community as well as environment. Our research utilized a mixed‐methods design, including a statewide mail survey of all Pennsylvania watershed organizations, followed by in‐depth interviews with 28 rural watershed organizations. This sequential approach progressively explored in more detail definitions of effectiveness, including the building of rural capacity. We find watershed organizations are potentially effective mechanisms for building local leadership, enhancing the skills of rural residents, and making valuable connections with other communities, facing similar water‐resource and rural‐development issues. However, the range of issues with which local watershed organizations engage and the methods they currently utilize may eventually limit their usefulness.     

Framing Service Learning in Social Work: An Interdisciplinary Elective Course Embedded within a University–Community Partnership

While academic service learning has grown in popularity across disciplines and universities, the pedagogical strategies for service learning courses vary greatly, especially for courses focused on development in underserved communities. Ideally, service learning pedagogy should place equal importance on student and community benefits, build reciprocal relationships with community partners, and engage students in deep reflection about social cultural and economic issues. In designing a new service learning elective course to engage students in a rural town revitalization project, we intentionally framed the course to meet the aforementioned goals. We used a three-component service learning pedagogy model that: (1) embedded the course in an existing university–community partnership; (2) mobilized interdisciplinary teams of students for community-identified projects; and (3) promoted reflection on complex economic and social justice issues by integrating students' processing through blog, faculty–student–community discussions, and community feedback. Benefits to students and community based on two qualitative studies are discussed, as are implications for social work education and research.     

The politics of marginality in Wallowa County,Oregon: Contesting the production of landscapes of consumption

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s implementation of House Bill 3326, a 2001 law giving counties the power to define certain agricultural lands as “marginal,” and therefore exempt from restrictions on subdivision and development, illustrates the ways in which these tensions become magnified as rural communities attempt to govern private land use in the context of rural restructuring. Implementation of HB3326 highlighted the tensions between landowners interested in capitalizing on development opportunities afforded by HB3326, neighboring producers concerned about interference from future amenity migrants, and existing amenity migrants with interests in protecting their rural idyll. Contestations over nonfarm development took place in the context of a strong agricultural community identity, concerns about the effects of economic restructuring on producers, and local resistance to the rural gentrification process. The process of defining marginality came to encompass not only technical issues of land productivity, but also broader community contestations over the continuation of traditional land uses and the legitimacy of various actors to govern private land.     

Capacity building for rural development in the United States

Rural development in the United States places considerable weight upon the contribution of leadership in small communities to bring about local regeneration. This effort draws upon the theory and practice of capacity building processes. The application of this approach is examined through the experience of the Colorado Rural Revitalisation Project which was initiated in 1988 as a collaborative venture between two universities and a state agency. It concluded in 1992 having worked with 47 rural communities. The outcomes of the partnership programme related to learning and action are discussed and the results of an evaluation exercise are presented. A suite of local, institutional and national issues arising from the Project is identified. It is concluded that there is merit in greater interest being taken in initiatives like the Colorado Rural Revitalisation Project by policy makers, educationalists and rural communities in Europe.     

All kinds of potential: Women and out-migration in an Atlantic Canadian coastal community

Rural researchers have found that women leave rural communities at a higher rate than men. Rural education researchers have also found that young women are significantly more successful in formal education than their male counterparts. Few studies though attempt to explain why this is so. This work presents data and analysis from two studies of education and out-migration from a rural-coastal community in Nova Scotia Canada. The questions I investigate in this session are: (1) why are women more likely to leave rural communities? (2) how have contemporary change forces like globalization and network society influenced the gender balance regarding rural out-migration? and (3) how has young rural women's relative success in formal education related to their higher rates of out-migration? Given the recent concern about boy's education, I raise some critical questions about the parallel notion that girls are doing just fine.     

Voluntarism as a mediator of the experience of growing old in evolving rural spaces and changing rural places

This paper examines voluntarism as a response to the challenges faced by people growing old in rural communities that are themselves being transformed in fundamental ways, both socially and demographically. Informed by evolving theorisations within the rural aging and geographies of voluntarism literatures, we outline the key processes in space and consequent impacts in place that have affected the experience of growing old in rural communities. We identify the changes in service systems that have led to concerns about ‘vulnerable people in vulnerable places’ and explore this idea in regional contexts ranging from the agricultural heartland to the resource hinterland of Canada. We argue that a distinction needs to be made between the impacts of long and short cycles of change flowing across rural space and attention paid to voluntarism as a critical process at the intersection of broad shifts in service and settlement systems and particular changes in rural communities. Specifically, we suggest that the ‘local dynamics of voluntarism’ involving the activities of voluntary organisations, community groups and individual volunteers in particular communities can be understood, at once, as a ‘barometer of change’, a ‘mechanism of adjustment’ and a ‘space of resistance’, and we draw on recent case studies of rural voluntarism to illustrate this three-part distinction. In considering the transformative potential of voluntarism for the experience of aging in place, our findings suggest that public discourse, as reflected in media coverage, tends to romanticise voluntarism at the expense of a more nuanced and critical appreciation of its importance to the future of aging rural communities and their elderly residents. The research raises timely questions about academic-versus-popular conceptions of aging in evolving rural spaces and changing rural places.     

Making Rural and Remote Communities More Age-Friendly: Experts’ Perspectives on Issues,Challenges, and Priorities

With the growing interest worldwide in making communities more age-friendly, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the factors that help or hinder communities in attaining this goal. In this article, we focus on rural and remote communities and present perspectives of 42 experts in the areas of aging, rural and remote issues, and policy who participated in a consensus conference on age-friendly rural and remote communities. Discussions highlighted that strengths in rural and remote communities, such as easy access to local leaders and existing partnerships, can help to further age-friendly goals; however, addressing major challenges, such as lack of infrastructure and limited availability of social and health services, requires regional or national government buy-in and funding opportunities. Age-friendly work in rural and remote communities is, therefore, ideally embedded in larger age-friendly initiatives and supported by regional or national policies, programs, and funding sources.     

Dressing and Undressing the House

Based on anthropological fieldwork within a museum collection, this article discusses the changing nature of the rural household in central Romania. Through a detailed examination of its interiors, it provides an understanding of local perspectives on traditional households. Tracing the historical process of undressing and remaking this space, the article highlights the shifting local attitudes toward domesticity and different sentiments toward the house voiced by source communities and museum professionals. It aims to illuminate the contrasting time-spaces in which rural households are embedded and to provide a context for rethinking this material in the museum setting.     

A play for rurality – Modernization versus local autonomy

It is common to understand the governing of rural space as the outcome of a conflict between some romantic protectors of a lost past on the one hand, and the people who worry about creating economic values on the other. However, the power to shape the rural should not only be searched for in the open struggle between protectors and developers, but also should be analysed at the level of discourse, in the play between discourses about how to deal with the rural. In this paper I therefore present a modernist discourse and demonstrate how taken-for-granted truths about the rural – its history, its present and its future – are made possible by this discourse. Secondly, I will reveal how rurality takes on a different meaning in an alternative to the modernist discourse, emphasizing local and regional autonomy. In demonstrating that rurality is contingent upon a play between these two discourses, I want to provide some new insights into an important force behind the persistence of ideas about rurality in Norway.     

Rural governance and local involvement: assessing state—community relations in the Scottish Highlands

Questions of rural governance have been attracting growing interest in recent years as rural analysts turn their attention to the institutional transformations that are taking place in and around the local state. This paper is concerned with the relationships between new governance agencies and rural communities. It follows recent contributions to the rural studies literature by adopting a ‘governmentality’ perspective which views the current emphasis on community involvement and empowerment as part of a broader neo-liberal strategy of ‘governing through community’. In the paper, I address a particular gap in the governmentality literature by examining how the underlying shift towards community action and local involvement is mediated and implemented by local and regional agencies in the Scottish Highlands, focusing specifically on the relationship between local enterprise companies and local communities. As such, the paper explores the tension between the concern with local participation and the reliance upon a set of managerial ‘technologies’ such as targeting and financial controls which reflect a need to ensure that local agencies are accountable to (central) government. The paper argues that while local state agencies must be analysed within wider circuits of power, local agencies and community groups retain some capacity to influence processes of rural governance. In conclusion, I suggest that the governmentality approach provides some critical insights for re-interpreting and analysing rural governance as a particular field of research.     

Continuation of Festivals and Community Resilience during COVID-19: The Case of Nagahama Hikiyama Festival in Shiga Prefecture,Japan

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the way of life of communities in Japan. This study examines the pandemic's impact by focusing on a popular activity in Japanese townships: participation in traditional festivals with roots dating back to before the Edo period. These festivals display the social customs of each community and their prosperity from the past to the present. Residents participating in local festivals gain a deep understanding of their personal importance within the community. However, many communities were forced to cancel their festivals in 2020 because of the pandemic. In 2021, many communities attempted to reinstate their traditional festivals, and some of them resumed the festivities with infection control measures in place. This case study examines how people resumed festivals in their communities and the conditions needed for them to reengage with their traditions. Focusing on the Nagahama Hikiyama Festival in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, we demonstrate the resilience of traditional communities in Japan. This study analyzes the reasons for and process of reviving and subsequently implementing traditional festivals and clarifies the positive factors contributing to the resumption of festivals in local communities. It examines the sources of resilience that have been cultivated in these communities and explains how their social capital bridges the gaps between local governments, schools, and broadcasters.     

Sense‐making in Taiwan's tea art ritual

This paper analyzes Taiwan's contemporary public tea gatherings from the perspective of “sense-scape,” the cultural world of sensory experiences. Performing elegance by way of tea brewing, bodily gestures and movements, costumes, utensil arrangements, and spatial design represents what is innovative about Taiwan's tea art culture, often referred to as “literati tea.” As the fragrance and flavors of tea, light and shadows, sounds and music, visual presentations of utensils, and space, as well as the general atmosphere of these events are captured by the senses and organized by the emotions, they inform us about who we are and who the other is. Despite its Japanese cultural infusion and Chinese cultural legacy, which have always complicated claims of a truly Taiwanese origin, Taiwan's tea art has been eagerly adopted by mainland Chinese tea communities since the late 2000s. That a local practice and invented tradition strongly identified with Taiwan has been embraced as “traditional” cultural practice in contemporary China presents a paradox that deserves our attention.     

The State Connection in China's Rural‐Urban Migration1

This study explores the role of China's rural local state‐owned and urban state‐owned units in its rural‐urban migration process. Most studies on Chinese migration have focused on migrants moving from rural to urban areas through informal mechanisms outside of the state's control. They therefore treat the Chinese state as an obstructionist force and dismiss its facilitative role in the migration process. By documenting rural local states' “labor export” strategies and urban state units' employment of millions of peasants, this article provides a corrective to the existing literature. It highlights and explains the state connection in China's rural‐urban migration.

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Revitalization of Local Community and Ethnicity: Nagasaki's Lantern Festival Among the Immigrant Chinese

Abstract: The Nagasaki's Lantern Festival is gaining popularity through the continued partnership between the immigrant Chinese (Kakyo) and Nagasaki city, largely owing to the ethnic Chinese revitalization movement and the distinct way of life typical in Nagasaki. Following my past research, I would like to discuss the development and modification of Nagasaki's Lantern Festival, to examine the relationship between the features specific to the Nagasaki area and the changes in the Kakyo community's sense of ethnicity amid the wave of globalization. By the Meiji period, ethnic Chinese society in Nagasaki consisted mainly of immigrants from Fu Jian province. Today the community is experiencing rapid transformation. In particular, the restoration of Sino–Japanese relations and the wave of internationalization have led to the creation of the Nagasaki Shinchi Chinatown Shopping District Promotion Association and the renewal of Chinatown for the ethnic Chinese. The Chinese Spring Festival, originally aimed toward community vitalization, not only included the Kakyo (immigrant Chinese) but the Japanese in the district and private corporations. Nagasaki was transformed not only into a strategic point for East Asia's multilateral trade, but also served as a trading center for the entire nation. But as Japanese ports opened their doors to the world after 1850, Nagasaki was reduced to only one of the local trading centers. As for overseas business, Nagasaki took advantage of its heavy industry by expanding its share in the Asian international market and has been striving in the domestic market to activate the local economy through tourism. Such strategy hinges on the rich historical and cultural resources formed and nurtured within the 400 years of relations with Asian nations. The historical merger between the Kakyo community and its cultural tradition in Nagasaki society served as one of the incentives for such development and progress. The enlargement of Nagasaki's Lantern Festival has been achieved as part of this concept of “Asian‐oriented region”, in line with the city's plan on tourism promotion.     

The Effects of Homeownership on Civic Participation among Immigrant Farmworkers in Washington State

Homeownership is generally considered to have positive benefits for families and communities. However, the collapse of the housing market in 2009 led to questions about this assumption, especially for low‐skilled workers whose employment is volatile. This question is particularly relevant to the farmworker population in rural communities for whom homeownership might function as the first step in the path toward social integration. In this study I ask whether homeownership impacts immigrant adaptation among farmworkers in Washington State. To answer this question researchers analyzed 2,845 responses from the Washington State Farm Worker Survey. I divided the sample into renters and homeowners and evaluated behaviors and attitudes along three dimensions: perceptions of community efficacy, civic engagement, and motivations for civic engagement. I found that when compared with those who rent, farmworkers who are homeowners tend to have a greater sense of community efficacy, are more engaged in their communities, and are more motivated to get involved in local affairs. These findings suggest that homeownership can function as a vehicle for immigrant adaptation among Washington State farmworkers. This bodes well for the future of the state's rural areas, where Latinos are increasingly becoming the majority in many agricultural communities.     

A New Type of (White) Provider: Shifting Masculinities in Mainstream Country Music from the 1980s to the 2010s

Masculinities have been rearranged in rural communities across the United States over the last four decades in response to shifting socioeconomic conditions. However, whether and how rural masculinity has been redefined at the national level over this same time period has received less attention. This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of representations of masculinity in mainstream country music from the 1980s to the 2010s. Analyzing the lyrics from over 800 weeks of songs that topped the Billboard country music charts, I find that working-class occupations and heterosexuality were relatively consistent components of representations of men across these decades. There were also two notable transformations. Depictions of providing shifted away from a traditional breadwinner toward men providing women with alcohol, transportation, and places to hook up. Masculinity and whiteness also became more closely linked. I argue that these rearranged intersections of gender, class, sexuality, and race enable the continued reproduction of gendered inequalities amid rural men’s worsening employment prospects. These results suggest shifting intersections of gender, class, sexuality, and race will inform how gendered inequalities are reproduced as socioeconomic conditions continue to transform in rural communities.     

Reclaiming the Prison Boom: Considering Prison Proliferation in the Era of Mass Imprisonment

While mass imprisonment is a central topic of investigation within the sociology of punishment, less is known about the prison boom – the period beginning in 1970 during which the number of US prison facilities tripled. Surprisingly, our understanding of prison impact on rural communities is minimal despite nearly 70 percent of the new facilities being constructed in rural areas. With little fanfare, prison proliferation has severely altered the physical, social, economic, and political landscape of rural America. With few exceptions, scholars fail to consider where and why prisons are built, and how these places are impacted economically, or local perceptions of these impacts. As the next steps for this research agenda have not been clearly defined, this paper serves two purposes: (i) to differentiate and redefine the contours of the prison boom from mass imprisonment and then (ii) to explore the causes and consequences of the prison boom in building a framework to conduct future research into these critical issues.     

“We don't want to talk about that”: Overcoming barriers to rural aging research and interventions on sensitive topics

Geographical, economic, social and cultural barriers to accessing services in rural areas are widely reported. Less widely discussed are dilemmas posed by individual and community reluctance to address sensitive health issues. This article, focusing on the highly sensitive area of mental health, and employing a participatory action approach, describes the natural history of a project, the Mental Health and Aging Initiative (MHAI) to enhance awareness of mental health issues in rural Kentucky-Appalachian communities and overcome the reluctance of individuals in these communities to seek assistance. Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), MHAI involved an educational intervention to improve knowledge about mental health and aging in rural Appalachian counties. The need to overcome significant community reluctance to engage in discussion of mental health resulted in significant modification of the protocol. The intervention was grounded in recognition of four key aspects of the local situation: (1) the need to understand the sensitivity of mental health as an element of rural culture; (2) the critical role of local community leaders as points of entry, acceptance, and action; (3) the need to overcome social stigma and reframe the topic of mental health in a more positive light; and (4) the need for methodological innovation in developing an empowering educational action plan oriented toward community-wide long-term impact. The intervention model that emerged from these considerations was based on engaging community leaders, providing educational and technical resources, and nurturing the acceptance by individual rural residents of responsibility for monitoring community mental health. This motif became a central theme in a strategy designed to facilitate culture change and acceptance of mental health as a community concern. It involved active engagement of community representatives in defining and implementing an intervention consistent with participatory action research as a means of empowering rural residents in monitoring and addressing sensitive health care issues. Given that many issues in rural health are difficult to address because of such sensitivity, the approach described is considered to have application in other contexts.     

Issues of Integration,Participation and Empowerment in Rural Development: The Case of LEADER in the Republic of Ireland

Currently, within the European Union increasing emphasis is being placed on devising innovative development strategies for rural areas. Considerable stress is laid on integration, participation and empowerment. Integration implies a need for cross-sectoral harmonisation of developmental objectives as well as increased co-ordination between agencies involved in the developmental process. Participation implies consultation with those most directly affected, namely rural dwellers, hence increasing the level of involvement of local people in the development process. Empowerment suggests a greater degree of influence being wielded by local residents and, thus, some shift in the power balance between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ and between ‘professionals’ and ‘amateurs’. In practise, this has resulted in a plethora of initiatives which, to a greater or lesser extent, espouse the idea of a more locally attuned ‘bottom-up’ approach to rural development stressing the importance of involving local communities. This approach is seen as a more appropriate mechanism than traditional ‘top-down’ strategies. Within Ireland, a number of programmes have been in operation since the late 1980s. This paper presents some evidence from on-going research on LEADER II in Ireland suggesting that there are a number of issues which need to be teased out with regard to current initiatives. Power relationships at both national and local levels need to be explored. While there may well be beneficial outcomes, the nature and extent of participation is quite variable. It may well be more valid to view current developments in terms of a process of incorporation rather than a move to a ‘bottom-up’ participatory model. While current strategies may represent a positive move, there is a need to ensure that the rhetoric being employed is translated into reality.